"This curiously moving history . . . traces the development of collections since the Renaissance through lively portraits of famous collectors." — The New YorkerFrom amassing sacred relics to collecting celebrity memorabilia, the impulse to hoard has gripped humankind throughout the centuries. But what is it that drives people to possess objects that have no conceivable use? To Have and To Hold is a captivating tour of collectors and their treasur...

“A sweeping story, embracing developments in economics and science, philosophy and exploration, religion and politics. . . . Beautifully clear.”— John Lanchester, The New YorkerHailed as an “arresting” (Lawrence Klepp, New Criterion) account, Nature’s Mutiny chronicles the great climate crisis of the seventeenth century that totally transformed Europe’s social and political fabric. Best-selling historian Philipp Blom reveals how a new, ra...

The flourishing of radical philosophy in Baron Thierry Holbach's Paris salon from the 1750s to the 1770s stands as a seminal event in Western history. Holbach's house was an international epicenter of revolutionary ideas and intellectual daring, bringing together such original minds as Denis Diderot, Laurence Sterne, David Hume, Adam Smith, Ferdinando Galiani, Horace Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, Guillaume Raynal, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.In A Wicked Company, acclaimed hist...

Subjugate the Earth traces the biography of a strange idea: the idea that human beings can subdue nature and rule over it. Born in Mesopotamia at the dawn of civilization, the idea of subjugating the Earth was included in the Bible, reached Europe through Christianity, and spread to the entire world through colonialism. The Enlightenment gave a scientific appearance to the ambition of controlling nature but did not change the ambition itself. Yet every birth presages a death. Only...

The wonders, horrors, and fears of the early twentieth century are brought to life in this beautifully told history.**"Hugely enjoyable and illuminating ... A work of narrative history at its best.” —**GuardianEurope, 1900-1914: a world adrift, a pulsating era of creativity and contradictions. The major topics of the day: terrorism, globalization, immigration, consumerism, the collapse of moral values, and the rivalry of superpower...

When the Great War ended in 1918, the West was broken. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced by both sides. Shell shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: the old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The world hurtled forward on gears and crankshafts, and terrifying new ideologies arose from the wreckage of past belief.In Fracture, criti...

Subjugate the Earth traces the biography of a strange idea: the idea that human beings can subdue nature and rule over it. Born in Mesopotamia at the dawn of civilization, the idea of subjugating the Earth was included in the Bible, reached Europe through Christianity, and spread through colonialism. The Enlightenment gave a scientific appearance to the ambition of controlling nature but did not change the ambition itself. Yet every birth presages a death. Only with the climate cr...

An illuminating work of environmental history that chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, which transformed the social and political fabric of Europe.Although hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, the temperature by the end of the sixteenth century plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbors were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and "frost fairs" were erected on a frozen Thames—with kiosks, taverns, and even b...

When the Great War ended in 1918, the West was broken. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced by both sides. Shell-shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: The old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The world hurtled forward on gears and crankshafts, and terrifying new ideologies arose from the wreckage of past belief.Historian Philipp Blom argu...

The latest novel from New York Times bestselling author and the "modern-day master of the genre" (Newsday), Alan Furst.From the New York Times bestselling author and the acclaimed "grandmaster" of espionage (Boston Globe) comes the taut, suspenseful story, set in Paris and Spain, of a man caught in the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War, and an operation that—with the help of FDR's secret operatives—will determine Europe's fate in the coming world ...

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYThe New York Times Book Review • The Economist • The Christian Science Monitor • Bloomberg Businessweek • The Globe and MailFrom the bestselling and award-winning author of Paris 1919 comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a fascinating portrait of Europe from 1900 up to the outbreak of World War I.The century since the end of the Napoleonic wars had been the most peaceful era Europe h...

Working with the British Secret Service on an undercover mission, Maisie Dobbs is sent to Hitler’s Germany in this thrilling tale of danger and intrigue—the twelfth novel in Jacqueline Winspear’s New York Times bestselling “series that seems to get better with each entry” (Wall Street Journal).It’s early 1938, and Maisie Dobbs is back in England. On a fine yet chilly morning, as she walks towards Fitzroy Square—a place of many memories—she is intercepted by Brian ...